


a terrible, smothering nothing

by theprimrosepath



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Character Study (kind of), Drabble, Gen, Introspection, Loneliness, follows Words of Radiance, no explicit pairings, though you can interpret it how you'd like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-12 02:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11727600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprimrosepath/pseuds/theprimrosepath
Summary: Kaladin spits out blood, knife in trembling fingers. Alone.That’s what theyallwere, silly.





	a terrible, smothering nothing

Loneliness is suffocating.

 

It's a hand down Kaladin's throat, one that reaches in and grasps his lungs, his heart, in a vice grip and _twists_ , leaving him gasping and nauseous and clutching his chest in the dark. If only the hand was real, he thinks strangely one night to the snoring of the men around him, so that he might reach in with his own hand and pull it out and never struggle to breathe again.

 

He sits at the bonfire one night, bowl of steaming soup in his hands as Rock ladles more into Bridge Four's open arms, and he feels the hand again, reaching down through his smiling lips, as the men joke and laugh and chatter lively around him.

 

Around him. Around him. Even _with_ him, the hand still reaches down, brushes against the beating of his heart with cold, seeking fingers.

 

Kaladin doesn't belong here, in warmth and happiness and joy. Desperately, he wishes to—he wants to be happy, he wants to belong, he wants to _be_ , but there's a wall there. A glass wall, between him and men.

 

Mystery, fame, reverence. Glass. Easily broken, one might think.

 

It's an insurmountable barrier to him.

 

Brightness Shallan Davar: her stolen boots and bright red hair and brilliant composure as she brandishes a paper at him in graceful women's script. "Is Highlady Navani in that room? Show her this, please," she commands, bordered on both sides by deserters with their heads held high.

 

She strides into the conference room with poise, looking for all the world like a fish dropped elegantly in water, and the hand squirms down his throat again.

 

Insufferable woman. Kaladin eyes Gaz twitching in the hall a few feet away. She fits right into a sea of skyeels.

 

Then, Shallan Davar glides out of the conference room and right into Highprince Sebarial's carriage, trailing behind her a wake of fascinated whispers, and the princeling's instant captivation leaves Kaladin's eyes alone to narrow.

 

She needs to be watched, he decides, and pretends that the suspicion isn't bitter at its core, that the hand doesn't claw at his throat when he sees Gaz and Vathah defer with something genuine to her, when she and the princeling laugh together at a menagerie over crabs.

 

Crabs, of all things. Nothing like glass.

 

"I want to be in Bridge Four," Brightlord Renarin states.

 

Kaladin watches him fumble soup bowls, listens to him speak bitingly of society's expectations, spies others treading warily, uncomfortably around him as he rocks oddly in place and looks away from people's eyes, and he nods.

 

"If any lighteyes could fit in here," he tells Moash—into the warmth, happiness, joy of Bridge Four, "he could."

 

Moash.

 

Moash pulls at the hand that clogs his lungs, inch by inch, but he does nothing for the glass, for the burden of endless responsibility Kaladin finds himself compelled to bear, and when he lies back in the cold prison cell and thinks of betrayal, the hand returns, wringing his heart in its palm as Syl whispers mournfully.

 

Death, he thinks on that hard bench one night, staring at a corner of his stone room as he suffocates slowly on stale, empty air. Death would almost be better.

 

(He chokes when Adolin is the first to greet him in freedom, but only on cologne.)

 

Syl flitters away on strange, unfamiliar winds, no longer easing the hand that now grips Kaladin's insides tighter and tighter. Moash meets his dark eyes with light, tan ones, and asks him to destroy in the name of what is right. Be the surgeon the world needs.

 

Whispers through the glass.

 

Who do you wish to become?

 

(Shallan's wit is like a bludgeon, as clever as a highstorm, but for a moment, he forgets himself and laughs.)

 

Armies organize on the horizon, radiant and magnificent, behind the banner of the only lighteyes with honor, and Kaladin sits on a boulder, surrounded by men and separate from them all. With dull eyes, he follows brilliant red hair and a massive white horse and _gags_ , ducking his head as he scrabbles for air, the cold hand strangling his lungs, tearing at his heart until he can hardly suck in a breath, drowning in the rain that patters endlessly against the roof.

 

Life. Strength. Journey.

 

Kaladin spits out blood, knife in trembling fingers. Alone.

 

 _That's what they_ all _were, silly._

 

Windrunner. Lightweaver, Bondsmith, Truthwatcher.

 

Kaladin stands by a pillar as three others step out around him, looking at them all and thinking of the others, of who else might be to come. And as he turns to go, to race the storm, he breathes in with surety around the hand that still reaches down his throat and walks forward.

**Author's Note:**

> smashed this out at ass o'clock in 3 hours before getting too tired and you can probably tell :'D this was meant to be self-indulgent as hell, though, so it's getting uploaded. (i have a lot of feelings about kaladin's need for friends and his weird foil-not-foil dynamic with shallan ok?)
> 
> title taken from kaladin's pov in wor ch.71: vigil.
> 
> find me at [@primrose-path-of-dalliance](https://primrose-path-of-dalliance.tumblr.com) on tumblr, where i post fandom things and the occasional bit of writing.


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